Using grep with the --exclude-dir flag to exclude multiple directories

Question

I am searching through a Ruby on Rails application for a word using grep on OSX, and I would like to exclude directories that match a certain pattern.

I am using the following command:

grep -inRw -E 'direct' . --exclude-dir -E 'git|log|asset'

This command is not doing what I thought it would do. Here is how I thought it would work:

• i - case insensitive search
• n - print line number in which pattern is found
• R - search recursively
• w - I only want whole words - i.e., match "direct" but not "directory"
• -E - use extended regular expression
• 'direct' - the regular expression I want to match
• . - search in the current directory
• --exclude-dir -E 'git|log|asset' - exclude directories that match git or log or asset.

In terms of the exclude directories, the command still ends up searching in the './git' and './log' directories, as well as in './app/assets'

I'm obviously lacking a fundamental piece of knowledge, but I do not know what it is.

Answer 1

It's pattern as in globs not pattern as in regex. Per the info page:

--exclude-dir=GLOB

Skip any command-line directory with a name suffix that matches the pattern GLOB. When searching recursively, skip any subdirectory whose base name matches GLOB. Ignore any redundant trailing slashes in GLOB.

So, you either use the switch multiple times or, if your shell supports brace expansion, you could golf it shorter and have the shell expand the list of patterns e.g.:

grep -inRw -E 'direct' . --exclude-dir={git,log,assets}

to exclude directories named git, log and assets or e.g.

grep -inRw -E 'direct' . --exclude-dir={\*git,asset\*}

to exclude directory names ending in git or starting with asset.

Note that the shell expands the list only if there are at least two dirnames/globs inside braces.

Answer 2

--exclude-dir does not understand |.

You can, however, get the same effect by specifying --exclude-dir multiple times, one for each directory that you want to exclude:

grep -inRw -E --exclude-dir 'asset' --exclude-dir 'git' --exclude-dir 'log' 'direct'

Answer 3

This is what I was doing wrong: input to --exclude-dir is dir-name(s) and not pathname(s). directory names cannot contain /.

Following works:

grep -r --exclude-dir={cache,lib} pattern /home/ /var/

Following doesn't work:

grep -r --exclude-dir={/var/cache,/var/lib} pattern /home/ /var/

Answer 4

Please use this:

grep -inRw -E 'direct' folder/ --exclude-dir={\*git\*,\*log\*,\*assets\*}

or current folder

grep -inRw -E 'direct' . --exclude-dir -E 'git|log|asset'